Danny Ch. 2
Page 8-14
5. Read Story
The Big Friendly Giant
Page 8
My father,
without the slightest doubt,
was the most marvelous
and exciting father
any boy ever had.
Here is a picture of him.
Page 9
You might think,
if you didn’t know him well,
that he was
a stern and serious man.
He wasn’t.
He was actually
a wildly funny person.
What made him
appear so serious
was the fact
that he never smiled
with his mouth.
He did it all with his eyes.
He had brilliant blue eyes
and when he thought
of something funny,
his eyes would flash
and if you looked carefully,
you could actually see
a tiny little golden spark
dancing in the middle
of each eye.
But the mouth never moved.
I was glad my father
was an eye-smiler.
It meant he never gave me
a fake smile,
because it’s impossible
to make your eyes twinkle
if you aren’t feeling
twinkly yourself.
A mouth-smile is different.
You can fake a mouth-smile
any time you want,
simply by moving your lips.
I’ve also learned
that a real mouth-smile
always has an eye-smile
to go with it,
so watch out,
I say,
when someone
smiles at you with his mouth
but the eyes stay the same.
It’s sure to be phony (bogus).
My father was not
what you would call
an educated man
and I doubt if
he had read twenty books
in his life.
But he was a marvelous
story-teller.
He used to make up
a bedtime story for me
every single night,
and the best ones
were turned into serials
and went on
for many nights running.
One of them,
which must have gone on
for at least fifty nights,
was about an enormous fellow
called The Big Friendly Giant,
or The BFG for short.
The BFG was three times
as tall as an ordinary man
and his hands were
as big as wheelbarrows.
He lived in a vast underground cavern
not far from our filling-station
and he only came out
into the open
when it was dark.
Page 10
Inside the cavern
he had a powder-factory
where he made
more than a hundred
different kinds of magic powder.
Occasionally,
as he told his stories,
my father would stride
up and down
waving his arms
and waggling his fingers.
But mostly
he would sit close to me
on the edge of my bunk
and speak very softly.
‘The Big Friendly Giant
makes his magic powders
out of the dreams
that children dream
when they are asleep,’ he said.
‘How?’ I asked.
‘Tell me how, Dad.’
‘Dreams, my love,
are very mysterious things.
They float around
in the night air like little clouds,
searching for sleeping people.’
‘Can you see them?’ I asked.
‘Nobody can see them.’
‘Then how does
The Big Friendly Giant
catch them?’
‘Ah,’ my father said.
‘That is the interesting part.
A dream, you see,
as it goes drifting
through the night air,
makes a tiny little
buzzing-humming sound,
a sound so soft and low
it is impossible
for ordinary people
to hear it.
But The BFG
can hear it easily.
His sense of hearing
is absolutely fantastic’
I loved the far intent look
on my father’s face
when he was telling a story.
His face was pale
and still and distant,
unconscious of
everything around him.
‘The BFG’, he said,
‘can hear the tread
of a ladybird’s footsteps
as she walks across a leaf.
He can hear the whisperings
of ants as they scurry around
in the soil
talking to one another.
He can hear
the sudden shrill cry of pain
a tree gives out
when a woodman
cuts into it
with an axe.
Page 11
Ah yes, my darling,
there is a whole world of sound
around us that we cannot hear
because our ears are simply not
sensitive enough.’
‘What happens
when he catches the dreams?’
I asked.
‘He imprisons them
in glass bottles
and screws the tops
down tight,’ my father said.
‘He has thousands
of these bottles
in his cave.’
‘Does he catch bad dreams
as well as good ones?’
‘Yes,’ my father said.
‘He catches both.
But he only uses
the good ones
in his powders.’
‘What does he do
with the bad ones?’
‘He explodes them.’
It is impossible to tell you
how much I loved my father.
When he was sitting
close to me on my bunk
I would reach out
and slide my hand into his,
and then
he would fold his long fingers
around my fist,
holding it tight.
Page 12
‘What does The BFG do
with his powders
after he has made them?’
I asked.
‘In the dead of night,’
my father said,
‘he goes prowling
through the villages
searching for houses
where children are asleep.
Because of his great height
he can reach windows
that are one
and even two flights up,
and when he finds a room
with a sleeping child,
he opens his suitcase…’
‘His suitcase?’ I said.
‘The BFG always carries
a suitcase and a blowpipe,’
my father said.
‘The blowpipe
is as long
as a lamp-post.
The suitcase
is for the powders.
Page 13
So he opens the suitcase
and selects exactly
the right powder…
and he puts it
into the blowpipe…
and he slides the blowpipe in
through the open window…
and poof…
he blows in the powder…
and the powder
floats around the room…
and the child breathes it in…’
‘And then what?’ I asked.
‘And then, Danny,
the child begins to dream
a marvelous
and fantastic dream…
and when the dream
reaches its most marvelous
and fantastic moment…
then the magic powder
really takes over…
and suddenly
the dream
is not a dream any longer
but a real happening…
and the child
is not asleep in bed…
he is fully awake
and is actually in the place
of the dream
and is taking part…
in the whole thing…
I mean
really taking part…
in real life.
More about that tomorrow.
It’s getting late.
Good-night, Danny.
Go to sleep.’
My father kissed me
and then
he turned down
the wick of
the little paraffin lamp
until the flame
went out.
He seated himself
in front of the wood stove,
which now made
a lovely red glow
in the dark room.
‘Dad,’ I whispered.
‘What is it?’
‘Have you ever actually seen
The Big Friendly Giant?’
‘Once,’ my father said.
‘Only once.’
‘You did! Where?’
‘I was out
behind the caravan,’
my father said,
‘and it was a clear
moonlit night,
and I happened to look up
and suddenly I saw
this tremendous
tall person running along
the crest of the hill.
He had a queer
long-striding
(lollop) lolloping gait
and his black cloak
was streaming out
behind him
like the wings of a bird.
Page 14
There was a big suitcase
in one hand
and a blowpipe
in the other,
and when he came
to the high
hawthorn hedge
at the end of the field,
he just strode over it
as though it wasn’t there.’
‘Were you frightened, Dad?’
‘No,’ my father said.
‘It was thrilling to see him,
and a little eerie,
but I wasn’t frightened.
Go to sleep now.
Good-night. ’